When people interact remotely through telecommunication equipment and services, it may be difficult to determine whether a user is available or not, or whether he or she can be interrupted in his or her current activity. For example, when a user initiates a voice call, a telecommunications system may not take user availability into account. While presence information provides some level of information about the user availability (e.g., online, idle, or on/off the telephone), it can be considered coarse.
A common practice for people with access to instant messaging (IM) that attempts to overcome these issues is to send a short message including the text “are you there” or “can you talk” to the other party, independent of the user presence status. Another conventional solution may include using presence information to provide a snapshot of a user context. This may include either simple indications of user availability (e.g., on/off line) or may include several additional factors (e.g., telephone status or location). However, a drawback to this solution is that it still places the burden of inferring a user's availability on the requester (i.e., the person requesting communications with another user).
Another conventional solution includes requiring users to manually set their availability status. For example, an availability status message may indicate that the user is busy, in a meeting, or out for lunch. However, this solution requires the user to remember to set and update his or her availability status. Moreover, the availability status message set by the user may be a blunt tool which cannot distinguish between different scenarios, for some of which the user may actually be available for communication. For example, a user involved in a meeting may not want to receive phone calls but may be responsive to email or instant messaging.
Yet another conventional technique includes using personal agent call screening and routing. However, again, one drawback to this technique is that it requires the user to setup the rules and to remember to activate/deactivate when their status changes. It also provides no direct feedback to the requestor about the user's availability beyond simply determining that the user was not available by being directed to the user's voicemail service.
Accordingly, in view of these difficulties, a need exists for improved systems and methods for determining a user's availability without burdening either the requesting user or the requested user and that can vary depending on the type of communication used.